It's Saturday teatime and I write this from our apartment having made it to Christchurch. Unfortunately, jet lag has caught up with us and the boys have given in and gone to bed (we all dozed most of the afternoon). The journey has been long but interesting and remarkably easy from an admin point of view. We cleared NZ immigration and customs very quickly and were delighted to see Howard & Jill Smith (who Ali knew from Woodford) waiting for us in the arrivals hall at the airport. It was a lovely surprise to be greeted.
However, we did have to decline an offer of Sunday lunch from the Smiths, having already accepted an offer from a family that we met at Singapore Airport and then chatted to on the plane. What was the chance of me randomly getting into conversation with someone who's got two sons (aged 8 & 11) that go to one of the schools that we are thinking of for the boys?
Ali's been the star behind the wheel as she's got to grips with driving an automatic for the first time. I always get out of having to drive first in new places on the grounds that I navigate. Having left our bags at the apartment, we went in search of a supermarket to do the shopping. Then while the boys dozed in the car we went for a drive out to the coast at Sumner and through the suburb of Mt Pleasant, from where the attached photograph was taken. I really could wake up to that view every day!
It's been a lovely clear winter's day here, with some high cloud. This meant that we have a great view of the Southern Alps and Canterbury Plains as we flew in this morning on the overnight flight from Singapore. The boys have been fantastic on the flights. The flights were 21.5 hours in total, of which Josh slept for the last hour of the flight into Singapore. Otherwise he dozed for about an hour and watch films and played computer games for the rest! Glancing at the row behind, Ali and Matthew seemed to accumulate a good few hours in the 'land of nod'. I can't sleep on planes, so had Josh for company.
Singapore was excellent. I'm not a fan of big cities but I love Singapore. It's so clean, alive and ordered. We grabbed a cheap and tasty meal at a hawkers market on Thursday evening and grabbed breakfast on the way to Sentosa Island on Friday. In between, the hotel was the plushest that the boys have experienced and located next to Raffles. We all had our photo taken in front of Raffles, to echo the photo that Ali and I have from 1996. Two has become four! The boys particularly enjoyed swimming in the open air pool at the hotel at 9pm on Thursday night.
We spent most of Friday at Sentosa Island, Singapore's holiday resort. Goes on a 600m long luge track and 4D cinema experiences sandwiched and hour on the beach swimming in a luke warm sea with palm trees fringing the sand.
We thank you for your prayers and best wishes for our journey. It seems strange that we are so far away and at the moment it feels like being on holiday, but I'm sure that it will hit us that we are a long way from the UK sometime in the future. But for the moment, we are glad to have arrived safely and are all longing for a good night's sleep and a lie in. God Bless
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